Membership surge post-invasion 📈

Theory

• General Incentive Model: Political participation is driven by rational cost-benefit calculations (e.g. Whiteley et al. 2021; Poletti, Webb, and Bale 2019)
• Beyond Ideology: Party membership under can reflect self-interest rather than ideological alignment
• Our extension:
  • Under occupation, party entry reflects self-preservation, not ideology

Argument

• pre-war Denmark 🇩🇰:
  • stable economy, democratic norms, small Jewish population, anti-German sentiment
• opportunism hypothesis: strategic entry into the party under the uncertainty of the invasion to secure position, future benefits
  • Age: older, more established, “more to lose”
  • Social Status: higher education, skill and class; secure position
  • Sector: civil service, strong uncertainty; agrarian, close economic ties
  • Location: across the country, but closer to German military centers

Empirical Strategy

• base associations:
  • OLS with occupation dummy as IV, controlling for age and gender
  • note: see draft for results
• regression discontinuity design (RDD):
  • running variable: date of entry
  • cutoff: 9 April 1940, German invasion
  • bandwidth selection automatic for now
  • modelling assumptions: linear, quadratic, cubic

Results (1/2)

Results (2/2)

Interpretation

Summary & Alternative Interpretation 🤔

• Mixed evidence for opportunism:
  • Older, high-status, and civil servant membership increased post-occupation.
  • No surge among farmers; concentration near the German border.

Contribution & Outlook 🔭

• Sheds light on collaboration under occupation without direct military rule \(\rightarrow\) political behavior under constrained democracy
• Leverages newly enriched historical data for disaggregated, causal analysis
• Shifts focus from resistance to collaboration in occupied states

Next steps:

• Trace post-war political consequences of collaboration using local election data
• Analyze spatial interplay between collaboration and resistance using resistance member data